


Tribute To A 30th Century "Terrorist"

by Sondra



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra





	Tribute To A 30th Century "Terrorist"

They do not know--those armchair ethicists  
With their pompous prattle about "right & wrong", "good & evil", "ends & means"--  
They do not know the heart-devouring anguish of the man whose only moral yardstick  
                is the Law of Love.  
When he must plant bombs to blast away the tentacles  
                squeezing the lifeblood out of those he cherishes...  
Or watch the bravest of his brothers go to the wall  
                over and over and over again...  
Or watch those less brave (but no less precious) crumble beneath burdens  
                they were never meant to bear...

In Haiti or on Horizon, you risk misunderstanding  
When you hide your tears from torturers.  
                (But you risk a whole lot worse if you don't hide them.)  
In South Africa or on Cygnus Alpha, your rhetoric evokes retaliation,  
And if the tyrant's blows rained down on you alone...  
                (But they never do; they never do.)  
From Aristo to Argentina...  
From Exbar to El Salvador...  
From Goth to Guatemala...  
One ceaseless struggle spans the sordid centuries.

There's pain in Palestine--and death among the Decimas.  
You seek victory for Viet Nam--or liberty for Lindor.  
And whether you end your life on a Grenada gallows, or on the floor of a  
                Gauda Prime tracking gallery,  
The platitude-mouthing moralists will rip your reputation to shreds.  
From the safety of sterile enclaves of discussion,  
Their judgment will hound your footsteps, or hound your ghost.  
They have not heeded the playwright's plea for mercy  
Towards men who, craving only a world of kindness,  
                could not themselves be kind.

(Oh, how well he understood--that man who married poetry to politics--  
How well Brecht would have understood the rebel not yet born the day he died.)

                           Bearing a thousand names,  
                           Wearing a thousand faces,  
                           Nearly a thousand years  
                           Before he ever laid claim to the Liberator,  
                           Roj Blake cried in the dark, cold night  
                           For the murdered children of another millennium.


End file.
